


written on the box, under the skull and bones

by p1013



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, First Person Narrator, Gay Draco Malfoy, H/D Hurt!Fest 2020, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Heterosexual Harry Potter, M/M, Malfoy Manor, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Suicide, Pastiche, Poison, Psychological Horror, Unhappy Ending, Unrequited Love, pretty rough ngl, though it's more like collective third?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:53:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25423441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/p1013/pseuds/p1013
Summary: When Draco Malfoy died, the entire Wizarding World noted it like the passing of some ancient thing. The funeral was widely attended in the same way that one would attend a museum exhibit opening, a grand spectacle of days long past. Men wanted to see the fallen Caesar, and women wanted to see his possessions, the memory of both glittering and golden in the dying sunlight.Most, of course, were interested in the Manor.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 30
Kudos: 94
Collections: H/D Hurt!Fest 2020





	written on the box, under the skull and bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [potteresque_ire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/potteresque_ire/gifts).



# I

When Draco Malfoy died, the entire Wizarding World noted it like the passing of some ancient thing. The funeral was widely attended in the same way that one would attend a museum exhibit opening, a grand spectacle of days long past. Men wanted to see the fallen Caesar, and women wanted to see his possessions, the memory of both glittering and golden in the dying sunlight.

Most, of course, were interested in the Manor. It was a grand, stately thing, even in disrepair. No one had passed through its threshold in at least three decades, other than an ever-changing rotation of house-elves carrying baskets or parcels, sent out at the whim of the sole occupant of that great, empty hulk of a home. Once a grand estate, time had damaged and destroyed it like it does everything else. The roof sagged like an old woman's skin, the bones of the house the only thing holding it up. Windows were covered by greying curtains or sun-bleached shutters, which seemed like a mercy since there was no one inside to look out of them anyway. The gardens were overgrown with tangled weeds and vines, and though the house still stood, it was like a dead thing in the center of a thicket overrun by green thorns.

Draco Malfoy had become such a thing, too. Once proud and beautiful, he'd faded and fallen with time. His hair, still long and white-blond, was spider web thin and tangled around his face. His whole body was thin, as if it had forgotten that flesh was a thing bones carried, and now all that was left was paper-dry skin stretched taut like canvas across his frame. He was as sun-bleached as his home, his veins the only hint of color in his pallid body.

There had been many punishments laid at the feet of Death Eaters after the War. Azkaban, primarily, but also fines and community service. The Malfoys received all of them. Lucius was sent away to the North Sea, never to be seen again, and Draco and his mother were left to tend to what remained of their no-longer vast fortune. Of course, Narcissa left a few years later for France, or so we'd been told. One morning, she had simply no longer been there, and any questions asked of it to the Master of the house went, like all the others, unanswered.

We had tried to understand him, those of us who came after the War. Though his family had been told to pay reparations for their actions during that terrible time, the money had never come in. The Minister sent letter after letter, all unanswered, all unreturned. Eventually, a team of Aurors had arrived on the doorstep of the Manor, demanding entrance as if demanding anything from Draco Malfoy had resulted in the receipt of the thing. One of the forgotten, forgettable house-elves had answered the door and from the perch of its overly large nose, it had stated that the Master of the house was not in before closing the door as firmly as the closing of a coffin.

Two weeks later, Draco Malfoy arrived at the Ministry. He was a spectre of a time past, a ghost of a man that haunted the history books and, occasionally—before he stopped leaving his home entirely—the Alleys of Wizarding London. That day, he strode through the august spaces of the Ministry as if he still had power, as if he weren't a criminal, tried and convicted and then cast aside, still a member of society, worthy of our regard instead of our perverse fascination. His father's cane, now his, hit the ground like bones rattling, and when he reached the Minister of Magic's office, he did not stop. He barreled through the massive double doors like a great wind, knocking everything aside in his path as he stood before the desk.

He did not sit, and the Minister did not ask him to. Instead, they looked at each other across the expanse of the Minister's desk, so much like a battlefield, strewn with papers instead of bodies.

"Malfoy," the Minister said. "You owe reparations."

"If you check your records, you will see I do not."

"It's part of your parole. If you don't pay them, we'll be forced to put you in Azkaban."

"There was a dispensation made immediately after my sentencing. You'll find it in the records, if you just look."

"And you know as well as I do that any paperwork from that time is suspect at best."

"The Malfoy Family owe the Ministry nothing. We have paid our dues. Check the records."

And he spun around on the pivot of his cane, its silver tip an axel to his wheel, and strode out of the Minister's office as if it were his own, as if he were welcome.

# II

So Draco Malfoy strode out of the Ministry the same way he'd strode out of the Wizengamot, unbent and unbroken, followed only by whispers, the same whispers that had hung around his name like cobwebs in eaves, like the smell that haunted the Manor.

Everyone knew what had happened there during the War. It wasn't a secret that Voldemort had lived in it, had used the Manor as a base of operations, though we all thought that whatever stain he'd left behind had disappeared when he was defeated. But a year after his father died in Azkaban and a short time after Harry Potter disappeared from public life, whatever awful things Voldemort had left in that formerly stately home rose from the ground like a foul mist, a miasma that stank of death and decay, no matter how far from the gates one stood.

No one was allowed inside the Manor, not that very many wanted entry then. We all blamed it on the place being too large for one person to care for properly, even with an army of house-elves at his beck and call. Decay was already setting in, the grounds filled with weeds and thorns, and no one really knew what secrets were kept in the dungeon-like cellars of the house, what the teams of Aurors and Unspeakables had missed when they went, room by room, to clear the place of dark magic.

His neighbors, with no one else to complain to, complained to the Ministry.

"And what would you have me do?" a worn-thin Percy Weasley asked. "It is his home, he can keep it as he sees fit."

"It's a matter of public health," they cried. "The Muggles will start asking about the stench."

"I'm sure it's nothing. I will send him an owl, and it will all be cleared up, just wait."

But the owl, like every other before it, went unanswered, and the smell grew worse.

"We have to do something," Robards said to Shaklebolt. "We can't let it seem like he's getting away with something."

"Do you want to tell Draco Malfoy his home smells like a trash heap, then?"

And with no good answer, a team of junior Aurors were sent to the edges of the property in the dead of night, where they snuck through the already falling gate to cast scouring charms and refreshing charms and whatever other housekeeping spells they'd learned at their parent's knees. It was dark, the house unlit and seemingly empty. As they left, the grounds smelling marginally better, a window in the upper storey of the home flared to light. There was a silhouette there like a spectre. Draco Malfoy, his features indistinguishable though his sharp shoulders were clear, stood in the window and watched as the men in red robes fled his property under the cover of night and his hidden gaze. A few days later, the smell was gone.

Public opinion turned, then. Instead of fear or anger, people began to pity him. They remembered his Great Aunt Walburga and the way her mind warped with age, and they thought that the Malfoys had held themselves in much too high regard for what they really were. His solitude became a sign that his mind, too, was slipping, and much like the faded grandeur of his home, it took Draco Malfoy from some great figure of the War to a faded portrait of a man, his colors blurred from sharp black and white to grey. And when his fortieth birthday passed and he was still alone, we blamed it on the world changing when he would not.

It came out later that, after his father died, all that he had was the Manor. The Malfoy's finances had disappeared after the War—perhaps reparations had been paid after all—and, in some way, we were happy of the fact. It made him human. It made him pitiable, rather than something to hate. How could we hate someone brought so low?

How could we hate someone brought to the edge of insanity by the loss of everything he'd once had, abandoned and falling in on himself like the house he insisted no one else enter?

# III

In the days immediately after the war, Draco was not seen often, though more so than he would be in the decades after. When he came out of the house, his hair was long, past his shoulders, and he looked so much like his father, we thought that Lucius had somehow stepped out of Azkaban and into Wiltshire.

Because the Manor had been inhabited by Death Eaters and by the Dark Lord himself, the Ministry insisted on it being searched and cleared. Almost the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement descended on the property like a swarm of red and black locusts, picking everything clean. They came with wands and potions and magic spells. They came with the law and history. And they came with Harry Potter.

He was a powerful man, like a sun barely contained. Magic rolled off of him like heat from a fire. But his body was powerful, too. Muscled and strong, trained and honed to a sharp, deadly thing. The other Aurors trailed after him like planets orbiting, circling him as he moved through the grounds. We all felt the pull of him, too, though we stayed outside of the gates. When he came to town, we would hear his voice echoing through the streets, his laughter lighting us all up with refracted joy.

There was a fair amount of surprise when the two of them started being seen in town. They would walk down the center of the main street like a mismatched pair, like chess pieces on a board, one king in black and the other in white. And though some people were happy that the two of them had found a way to mend their seemingly irreparable fences, others whispered behind their hands that the Weasleys should be told, that they should come to Wiltshire and speak sense.

It was odd to think of Draco Malfoy having an interest in Harry Potter, at least one that wasn't antagonistic or platonic. Everyone who went to school with them remembered the two of them fighting constantly, a battle that no one else fully understood but watched anyway. Seeing them laughing together in a quaint village, Draco in black, Harry in red, felt like a thing that shouldn't be, something less believable than magic. But it was written in the lines of his body when the two of them would walk together through the streets of town, Draco pulled into Harry's orbit like so many others and all of his yearning clear as sunlight through water.

The villagers whispered "Do you think?" and "Could it be?" and "Really? Those two?" And always, at the end, "Poor Draco."

His shoulders were unbent, his back unbroken, his dignity like armour around him. It was as if his own strength was the opposite of his home's, Draco growing larger and more stately as his roof fell in around his head and his rooms swarmed with Aurors and Unspeakables like ants. He seemed untouchable, unquestionable, even when he requested the poison from the local apothecary.

"For rats," he said, head held high, pointed chin tipped up.

"Now, Mr Malfoy." The apothecarist shifted behind his counter, uncomfortable under that gaze. "Are you sure you're allowed to have this?"

It turned his gaze steely and dark. "I have no such restrictions on my person. I am allowed to care for my home, and as I have an infestation, I have need of poison."

"You could Vanish them," the apothecarist offered, and Draco scoffed.

"Poison, sir. The best you have."

"Yes, sir." He turned around and walked into the store room, but his assistant came out instead, a brown parcel held in his young hands.

 _For rats_ was written across the paper, the ink still wet and smeared by Draco's fingers as he took it away and left a few tarnished Galleons behind.

# IV

We thought he would kill himself after that. We spoke behind cupped hands, eyes darting towards the looming figure of the Manor, waiting for the news that the last Malfoy had done away with himself like so many people had wanted after the war. We didn't want it anymore, not when we'd been whispering "Poor Draco" for so long, though many thought it might be best, considering.

At first, we had believed a romance was blossoming, that Malfoy Manor might be covered in roses instead of briar. But as Draco and Harry's walks continued, words fell like petals, and "Draco will marry him" became "Draco will convince him" became "Poor Draco" yet again. Harry, as we all well knew, liked women and spent his evenings in Diagon Alley with the company of many of them, but still, they walked together, and still, we pitied Draco for his wanting.

The Weasleys came to Wiltshire and settled in the town. Harry's visits became more frequent, the youngest of the family keeping him company most of all, and we knew that nothing would come of his and Draco's friendship or Draco's desire for more. And though we learned that Draco had ordered a silver pocket watch with H.P. engraved in fine, delicate lines on the back, and a set of dress robes that would be too large for his own thin frame, we knew it would be for naught.

We were not surprised when Harry Potter left. Some were disappointed that he disappeared in the middle of the night and they weren't afforded the show of Harry and Draco facing off against each other, presenting an encore of their childhood rivalry on the public stage. A week later, the Weasleys dispersed as well, leaving behind the wreckage a too-large group of guests always creates in their wake. It was with a softly released breath that we went about returning to our lives and the quiet waiting for Draco Malfoy's response to being left alone yet again.

That was the last we ever saw of Harry Potter in Wiltshire. Some say he went into seclusion, locking himself away in his London home or escaping to the Continent or America, anything to keep apart from the meaning his name carried with it. Others speculated that he was sent on some great, secret mission for the Ministry, an undertaking he never returned from. Draco also disappeared for a time, hiding in the darkened hallways of the Manor. The house-elves continued to leave and return, baskets in hand, but of their master, we saw no sign. There was sometimes a curtain pulled back, a shutter removed, a door left ajar. Those tiny signs that the last Malfoy was still alive, still moving from room to room while we waited to see him like a natural phenomenon, like an eclipse, a ribbon of light pressed out around a circle of absolute dark.

When next we saw him, his blond hair had forgotten its yellow and gone pure white. His frame, already thin when he first vanished into the bowels of his home, was like the memory of a body now. His skin stretched tight across his face like a funeral shroud over a skull, sharp blades of cheekbones above a mouth spread beneath it like a wound in his face. His clothes hung from him like the roof of Malfoy Manor, sunken and draped and on the edge of falling in.

When he died, his hair was to his waist and as white as marble or snow, and it laid over his shoulders like a lace shawl, like a shroud.

We watched the house-elves grow older and change, generations replacing generations, all of them coming and going from Malfoy Manor like a thin line of life seeping from a vein. The Ministry sent owls, and they returned with their letters unanswered. Draco would appear in windows, wasted like a statue carved too thin and staring at us as we stared back, neither of us acknowledging the other. He passed through time like that, an immovable figure, a pillar in a ruin, something that we saw as a touchstone, of a time almost passed.

And slowly, he stopped appearing in the windows. Slowly, the house-elves appeared less and less frequently. He died in that house, in the dust and the gloom and the sagging roof above it all, surrounded by the forgotten momentos of his family and his past, his only mourners a bevy of servants who, given the choice, would not have stayed at all.

He died in the parlour, his white head on the dust-stained arm of a couch so faded that even the memory of colour didn't remain.

# V

The house-elf who met us at the door was stooped and cracked with age. His eyes were like two lumps of coal in an earthen face, sunken and dark with no reflection of the light from outside. He let us in, and then he walked out of the front door to disappear with a sharp crack, never to be seen again, as forgotten and gone as his former Master.

The funeral was held a few days after his passing. With no family, the Ministry took matters into their own hands. It wasn't an ostentatious affair since there was little money left by then. But those of us from the town brought flowers and transfigured the simple Ministry coffin into something a bit more grand, a bit more fitting for one of the last members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. The old women wore their best dress robes and the men wore their medals from the War, and they all pretended like they knew him, once, before, when they were all younger.

The house itself was all that remained. The lower level had been left open, but as we walked carefully up stairs that felt like they might give way at any second, we found the upper storey a different thing entirely. Doorways were covered in boards, with nails hammered into them with imprecise, twisted results. Others were locked with magic that wouldn't fall away, even in death. And all along the hallways, the wallpaper fell in tatters around us, like someone had walked up and down those carpeted floors, their nails dragging along the wall next to them and tearing everything beneath.

The master bedroom was pristine, though. The door shone with a high polish, the doorknob the only untarnished bit of metal that we had seen so far in the house. It gave way easily beneath the men's hands when they turned it, and the hinges made not a sound as they pushed it open.

The dust was thick in the carpet, thick enough to turn red grey, to leave polished silver flat, the letters there filled in with miniscule motes of grime and age. There was a wand on the dresser, broken but laid close enough together that the break might be missed if one didn't look too closely. A pair of shoes sat by the side of the bed, their shine long since dulled.

The man himself lay in the bed.

We stood there for a long moment, taking in the sunken and grinning skull. Laying on its side like it might embrace someone, the body had sunk into the mattress, befowled it as it decayed. Its dark hair was coated in dust, almost turning the untameable mass of it grey with age that would never touch the strands.

The second pillow almost went unnoticed. But as we drew close, we saw the indent there, and the long, single hair laying across it, like a cobweb, like marble, like snow, so pale that even the memory of colour no longer remained.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a pastiche of A Rose for Emily. Draco falls in love with Harry, who does not return his feelings. It's implied that Draco poisons Harry rather than let him go. Draco then sleeps with Harry's decaying corpse in his bed until his own death.
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you haven't read William Faulkner's original piece, I highly recommend it. The mood is stunning, and the end packs SUCH a wallop. Be forewarned that it was written by a white man in the 1930's, and he's talking about the post-Civil War South, so there's more than one use of the N-word. Not a good look, Billy. Anyway, [here's a link](http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/wf_rose.html) if you want to check it out.
> 
> Big thanks to my beta, M, who is familiar with the original piece and Harry Potter, and confirmed for me that this wasn't a terrible idea. Also, big thanks to potteresque_ire for the original prompt, though I think I veered off a bit from it. I hope you like what I created in the end. ♥
> 
> I'm expecting to get _maybe_ ten hits on this thing... Those tags...
> 
> \--
> 
> Remember to leave some love for the creator if you can! Come reblog this work and view others from this fest [HERE](https://hd-hurtfest.tumblr.com/) on the H/D Hurt!Fest tumblr page!


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